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David Ferry (poet)
David Ferry (born 1924) is an American poet, translator, and academic. Life Ferry was born in Orange, New Jersey. He grew up and attended Columbia High School amid the “wild hills” of suburban Maplewood, New Jersey. (Described in his poem "Narcissus") His undergraduate education at Amherst College was interrupted by his service in the United States Army Air Force during World War II. He ultimately received a B.A. from Amherst in 1946. He went on to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. and it was during his graduate studies that he published his first poems in the Kenyon Review. From 1952 until his retirement in 1989, Ferry taught at Wellesley College where he was, for many years, the chairman of the English Department. He holds the title Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley. He has also taught writing at Boston University. Ferry was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998, and he is a fellow of the Academy of American Poets. In 1958 Ferry married literary critic Anne Ferry (died 2006), who later became the 1st full-time woman member of the Harvard University English faculty; they had 2 children, Elizabeth, who became an anthropologist, and Stephen, who became a photojournalist. Before moving to his current home in Brookline Massachusetts, Ferry lived across the Charles River in Cambridge, in the house where 19th-century journalist and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller lived before she joined the Brook Farm community. Interview with Ferry about his translation of The Georgics of Virgil. Writing Poet W.S. Merwin has described Ferry's work as having an "assured quiet tone" that communicates "complexities of feeling with unfailing proportion and grace." The critic Christopher Ricks regards Ferry as "the best poet now writing in America". Recognition In 2000, Ferry’s book of new and selected poems and translations, Of No Country I Know, received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress (for the best work of poetry for the previous two years),, and the Bingham Poetry Prize. Ferry is also a recipient of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. In 2011, Ferry was awarded the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.Patricia Cohen, David Ferry Wins the Ruth Lilly Poetry Award for Lifetime Achievement, ArtsBeat, New York Times, April 15, 2011. Web, Sep. 14, 2012. Publications Poetry *''On the Way to the Island''. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1960. *''A Letter and Some Photographs: A group of poems''. Seattle, WA: Sea Pen Press & Paper Mill, 1981. *''Strangers: A book of poems''. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983. *''Dwelling Places: Poems and translations''. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993. *''Of No Country I Know: New and selected poems and translations''. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Non-fiction *''The Limits of Mortality: An essay on Wordsworth's major poems''. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1959. Translated *''Gilgamesh: A new rendering in English verse''. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1992. *''The Odes of Horace''. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997. *''The Eclogues of Virgil: A translation''. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. * The Epistles of Horace; A translation. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001. * The Georgics of Virgil. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006. Edited * The Laurel Wordsworth. Dell, 1959. *(Editor with others) British Literature, 3rd edition (Ferry was not associated with earlier editions). Heath, 1974. *(Selector and author of introduction) David Moolten, Plums & Ashes. Boston: Northeastern University Press (Boston), 1994. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.David Ferry b. 1924, Poetry Foundation, Web, Sep. 14, 2011. See also * List of U.S. poets References Notes External links ;Poems * "Lake Water" * David Ferry profile & 2 poems at the Academy of American Poets *David Ferry b. 1924 at the Poetry Foundation ;Audio / video *David Ferry at YouTube *"David Ferry, poet", Cornell University ;Books *David Ferry at Amazon.com ;About *"David Ferry's Beautiful Thefts" at The New Yorker Category:Living people Category:1924 births Category:American poets Category:Amherst College alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:People from Orange, New Jersey Category:Wellesley College faculty Category:Latin–English translators Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets